“It would be the hardest thing I had ever done. With no experience nailing together anything bigger than a bookshelf, my kids and I poured concrete, framed the walls and laid bricks for our two story, five bedroom house. I had convinced myself that if my family could build a house, we could rebuild our broken family,” she wrote.

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At the time, Brookins’ kids were 17, 15, 11, and 2. Life, she says, had “knocked them down”. But with the help of a little bit of money, a few tools and some videos, they built something together.

“Not just any house,” Brookins explains. “We built a 3500 square foot house with five bedrooms, a three car garage, a huge shop, and a two-story treehouse.”

“While our toes nearly froze off as we mixed concrete in a wheelbarrow, our back muscles ached from hauling two-by-fours, and we sweated and itched our way through fiberglass insulation—we also rebuilt our broken family.”

Since the build, Brookins wrote a book called Rise, How a House Built a Familyand created her own podcast Raise My Roof – where she interviews experts, activists, and celebrities about things they’ve overcome and what they’re building now.

Women share their experience of domestic violence and violence online.